' Wrote:I've been wondering for a long time what the community vision for Discovery is. One source of tension is related to conflicting ideas of role play:
Idea 1: Discovery is built around a mod defining the role play environment. Players play within this somewhat static environment and cannot change it quickly or easily - devs do this. This is a dungeon master style of game where the master sets the rules and boundaries and everybody plays within it.
Idea 2: Discovery is built by the players. Their actions change the role play environment. This means that the actions of some players will definitely hurt other players. For an extreme example, should the outcasts overrun Liberty the LN and Liberty factions will cease to exist. This idea is a kind of mini-EVE.
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1: Theres no dungeon mastery here. Wrong game. the platform is incapable. At best youve wrote and developed a setting that is dm less in nature and is regimented by constant eyes and ears to make sure the spirit of the setting is followed.
There are no quests and no events outside of the events servers which are HILARIOUS FUN but basic pewfests with a calculated end, story participation not story telling.
No.. your not a dm. Your a policy maker and enforcer. A group of creative individuals and wacky personalities that make one of the more interesting settings out there. For better or worse that remains number one in the freelancer community at this time.
Also the dynamic personalities at play with the devs and admins are too numerous (this is experience talking so write it off as necessary) to even entertain a smooth environment for you to hold events on the server with real RP rewards or progress via a dm or gm. IE. you call into direct question favoritism and fairness even more so in that concept then what you may encounter now.
It is a playground with a lot of monitors guarding it. And its worked.
My only recommendations for 1 is in regards to your sanity and those who volunteer their time here is to make and develop more automatic script based deterrents for violations of game play ethics and rules to save YOU THE WORKLOAD and not pushing it to faction members/leadership. You serve them. they should not serve you. Your serving the players they should not serve you under any circumstances.
2: This is the election again to indulge is some semblance of squad war or conquest. Bad idea. What your enlisting again is the possibility to be at the mercy of favoritism in light of who the mods thought won and since many of the admin teams are involved in the official factions your building a time bomb.
My recommendations here. Unless there is a script based system of tallying results kills and who wins I can see the venom and hatred coming from this idea to be community killing. (maybe even with such measures)
A community should never ever be wholly at war with itself. You will number its days thusly. (at least not without a significant financial stake money makes even the most dysfunctional and rabid concepts fly)
I have seen a lot of interesting ideas on how to alter the rules and allow more freedoms to players and how they'd like to enjoy themselves and play. Quite frankly there has always been fun to be had here as long as the players play and had fun with what they made it.
Even when my first experience here was being pirated by a Rhineland battleship with a pirate ID there were ways around the situation. Ive had to adapt to each new version of this mod and it was always fun.
As long as you give us more to play with more possibilities to express characters that (in my case) are now several years old an in one case nearly a decade old I believe it will be the best recipe for success.
ps. It works. Id doesn't have to work better all the time.
